Re: [september17discuss] MoveOn Execs Now Official Spokespeople For OWS, According to MSM Execs

MoveOn, which is the largest organization of "progressive Democrats," does still support Obama. If progressive Democrats don't support Obama, which Democratic politicians do they support? Who are these supposed progressive Democrats? The party is almost entirely a corporate-supremacy movement at this point. There are so few Democrats that can make any kind of claim to being progressive that they have no power whatsoever within the party. Instead of being an effective progressive force "inside the system," they are helping to maintain the illusion that the Democrats are a progressive party. But by being part of a party that is overwhelmingly committed to corporate power, they are supporting that party and its goals.

Supporting MoveOn is inconsistent with the idea that we don't support the Democrats, since MoveOn is joined at the hip to the Democrats. I don't think we should start attacking MoveOn, but we need to distinguish our agenda from theirs so that people outside the movement understand that we are pushing for much bigger changes than MoveOn wants, and that we don't support the Democrats. If MoveOn still wants to support us once we've made that clear, great, but if we don't make that clear, then MoveOn will be able to present their agenda as representing the Occupy movement, thereby co-opting it and blunting its transformative potential. And we need to be realistic about what MoveOn represents: they are for all intents and purposes a support group for the supposedly "progressive" wing of the Democratic Party. But that "progressive" wing, which still sees Obama as its ally, is in fact not progressive at all, but supports Wall Street to the hilt.Doug

I think it would be a mistake to characterize MoveOn as Other to this movement. On a tactical level, there are objectives we may actually share with MoveOn--namely, making sure that the next Congress has enough elected representatives who are able to pass Glass-Steagall or even nationalize the banks. Tactically, and I repeat *tactically*, we should be able to make the regulation of the financial sector and the banking system a fundamental theme of 2012.

Strategically, however, we cannot share the path with MoveOn because the struggle for real democracy necessarily entails the breakdown of the two-party system. Strategically, we should ask ourselves what kind of world we want to live in and what kind of forms of social organization are going to sustain it.

For instance, I would like to live in a world where water, food, housing, education, health care, the communication infrastructure, and transportation are not treated primarily as commodities but as commons. What are the forms of social and political organization that could sustain the management of these resources and services as commons? How should they be organized? And how are we going to develop them? I would like the Demands Committee to discuss such issues--i.e. discuss the movement as a constituent process.

In order to sustain such constituent process, however, it is not sufficient to say "we are autonomous, we do not need anyone." Autonomy can and should be achieved by building alliances and as we become capable of pushing into the mainstream of US politics keywords that were unthinkable only few years ago. "Regulate the financial sector, tax financial rent, curb corporate power" are such key words. Making them major talking points of 2012 would really mean to put into crisis 30 years of neoliberal hegemony--whose global mantra has been deregulate, privatize, use credit (debt) as a leverage to expand the GDP.

Of course, this is what MoveOn hopes to do. But is it really that way? Is MoveOn, for instance, ready to support a New York Democrat in the primaries who is going to run on an openly anti-Wall Street platform and unseat Charles Schumer from his WS-greased Senate seat? I guess that what I am trying to say here is that we should not only think of how MoveOn is using OWS but also how OWS may use MoveOn to pursue a long-term radical agenda, which will not go very far if we limit ourselves to state our own purity. Further, as many have already noticed on this list, the fact that MoveOn is supporting OWS is also a symptom of the fact that this organization has already moved onto more radical positions thanks to OWS.

With all of this of course I am not saying that we should build a public alliance with MoveOn or any other electoral machine, but that we should be able to use the weight of this movement to condition the electoral process *from without* and retain a strong presence in the media as they will shift their focus back to party politics.

I don't see the problem with this (especially after listening to the radio broadcast which makes it obvious when the dj is speaking and when the moveon guy is speaking. moveon makes it clear that we are separate movements with separate goals but with overlapping interests and that we can work together. It is not any worse for moveon to march to an occupation than for a union to march to the occupation. Notice that the occupation isn't marching to them.

FYI, here is how MoveOn is working on the local level to co-opt. This was sent to the organizers of #OCCUPYBERKELEY. Notice how they are trying to turn Oct 15 into a rally for themselves. I assume these kinds of "friendly" emails are being sent out to occupations across the country. They want to steal our momentum to revive their dead campaign.

We've been organizing a BIG Jobs Not Cuts march and rally since August, and it's in Oakland, Oct. 15, 1 pm, starting at Laney College. Can you have your OccupyBerkeley rally join us, and we can then join you, to make both actions bigger and better? All the Bay Area labor councils, MoveOn/Rebuild the Dream, peace, environmental, youth, senior, and political groups have endorsed the Jobs Not Cuts protest, and we need you, too. See all the details at www.jobs-not-cuts.org.

Our plan is to march from Laney to Frank Ogawa Plaza, stopping at the Federal Building to symbolically nail our list of demands to Congress's door.

We've been sending out press releases and calendar listings, and all our participating groups are publicizing the protest to their members. I'm so sorry that you didn't get the word before planning your action, but I hope we can join forces and make lemonade out of this lemon of a conflict.

OccupyWallSt.org is prepared to help. Our website gets ~300,000 visitors a day and we are ready to make a very strong statement against any group attempting to drown out the voices of the people. This movement will be co-opted over our dead bodies.

top MoveOn leaders / executives are all over national television speaking for the movement. Saying We, We, We, We and directing people to OccupyWallStreetEvents.com, which redirects to the DailyKos.

again, fully appreciate the help and support of MoveOn, but the MSM is clearly using them as the spokespeople for OWS. I just had an off-record discussion w/ NBC executives who say that other news execs there plan to use them to divide the movement. This is an blatant attempt to fracture the 99% into a Democratic Party organization. The leadership of MoveON and the Daily Kos are Democratic Party operatives. They do a lot of great work, but they are divide and conquer pawns. For years they ignored Wall Street protests to keep complete focus on the Republicans, in favor of Goldman's Obama and Wall Street's Democratic leadership.

if anyone at Move On or Daily Kos would like to have a public debate about these comments, we invite it.

if MoveOn leaders / executives are going to keep going on National TV to speak for OWS, we need them to make a clear statement.

please urgently propose that statement or a plan to call them out in an effective way.

know there are some people who think any attempts at co-option will be unsuccessful, and there is some truth to that, but we can't let blatant co-option attempts continue w/out a response. the longer we remain silent as people get on national tv claiming to speak for and lead the movement, the more damage will be done.